Publications by authors named "Andrew G Gehring"

Article Synopsis
  • Foodborne pathogens cause approximately 600 million illnesses and 420,000 deaths worldwide each year, highlighting the need for effective detection methods in food products like swine, poultry, and cattle.
  • Traditional screening methods include immunoassays, DNA techniques, and culture methods, but they can be time-consuming when used together.
  • This project tested the Oxford Nanopore Technologies' MinION sequencer for rapid DNA sequencing and found a strong correlation between DNA concentration and sequencing output, demonstrating its potential for quick food safety assessments in under 3 hours.
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The USDA-FSIS has zero tolerance for O157:H7 in raw ground beef. Currently, FSIS collects samples from beef processing facilities and ships them overnight to regional testing laboratories. Pathogen detection requires robust methods that employ an initial 15-24 h culture enrichment.

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Consumption of food contaminated by can result in Listeriosis, an illness with hospitalization rates of 94% and mortality rates up to 30%. As a result, U.S.

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As the world population has grown, new demands on the production of foods have been met by increased efficiencies in production, from planting and harvesting to processing, packaging and distribution to retail locations. These efficiencies enable rapid intranational and global dissemination of foods, providing longer "face time" for products on retail shelves and allowing consumers to make healthy dietary choices year-round. However, our food production capabilities have outpaced the capacity of traditional detection methods to ensure our foods are safe.

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Determination of the microbial content in foods is important, not only for safe consumption, but also for food quality, value, and yield. A variety of molecular techniques are currently available for both identification and quantification of microbial content within samples; however, their success is often contingent upon proper sample preparation when the subject of investigation is a complex mixture of components such as foods. Because of the importance of sample preparation, the present study employs a systematic approach to compare the effects of four different separation techniques (glass wool, 50 μm polypropylene filters, graphite felt, and continuous flow centrifugation (CFC)) on sample preparation.

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Foodborne illness is a common yet preventable public health concern generating significant costs for the healthcare system, making systems to accurately detect this pathogen a topic of current research. Enzyme-based immunoassays are highly desirable because they offer shorter response times compared to traditional culture-based methods. Biosensors employing the electrochemical and optical detection of a substrate oxidized by horseradish peroxidase (HRP) have been used to successfully detect biomolecules; however, their inability to handle large sample volumes severely limits their application to food safety despite their accuracy and reliability.

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Amplified luminescent proximity homogenous assay-linked immunosorbent assay (AlphaLISA) is comprised of a bead-based immunoassay that is used for small molecule detection. In this study, a novel AlphaLISA was developed and optimized for the detection of Shiga-toxin 2 (Stx2). Efficacy and sensitivity trials showed the AlphaLISA could detect ≥0.

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DNA sequencing and other DNA-based methods are now broadly used for detection and identification of bacterial foodborne pathogens. For the identification of foodborne bacterial pathogens, taxonomic assignments must be made to the species or even subspecies level. Long-read DNA sequencing provides finer taxonomic resolution than short-read sequencing.

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Rapid detection of the foodborne pathogen Escherichia coli O157:H7 is of vital importance for public health worldwide. Among detection methods, reporter phages represent unique and sensitive tools for the detection of E. coli O157:H7 from food as they are host-specific and able to differentiate live cells from dead ones.

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Antibody microarray is a powerful analytical technique because of its inherent ability to simultaneously discriminate and measure numerous analytes, therefore making the technique conducive to both the multiplexed detection and identification of bacterial analytes (i.e., whole cells, as well as associated metabolites and/or toxins).

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Microfiltration of chicken extracts has the potential to significantly decrease the time required to detect Salmonella, as long as the extract can be efficiently filtered and the pathogenic microorganisms kept in a viable state during this process. We present conditions that enable microfiltration by adding endopeptidase from Bacillus amyloliquefaciens to chicken extracts or chicken rinse, prior to microfiltration with fluid flow on both retentate and permeate sides of 0.2 μm cutoff polysulfone and polyethersulfone hollow fiber membranes.

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Escherichia coli O157:H7 is a major cause of foodborne illness and methods for rapid and sensitive detection of this deadly pathogen are needed to protect consumers. The use of immunomagnetic separation (IMS) for capturing and detecting foodborne pathogens has gained popularity, partially due to the introduction of automated and high throughput IMS instrumentation. Three methods for automated IMS that test different sample volumes, Kingfisher mL, Pathatrix Auto, and Pathatrix Ultra, were compared using microbiological detection of E.

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Incidental contamination of foods by pathogenic bacteria and/or their toxins is a serious threat to public health and the global economy. The presence of food-borne pathogens and toxins must be rapidly determined at various stages of food production, processing, and distribution. Producers, processors, regulators, retailers, and public health professionals need simple and cost-effective methods to detect different species or serotypes of bacteria and associated toxins in large numbers of food samples.

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The thixotropic-like properties of saline/glycerol drops, containing biotinylated capture antibodies, on streptavidin-coated glass slides have been investigated, along with their implications for bacterial detection in a fluorescent microarray immunoassay. The thixotropic-like nature of 60:40 saline-glycerol semisolid droplets (with differing amounts of antibodies) was observed when bacteria were captured, and their presence detected using a fluorescently-labeled antibody. Semisolid, gel-like drops of biotinylated capture antibody became liquefied and moved, and then returned to semisolid state, during the normal immunoassay procedures for bacterial capture and detection.

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The present work describes the selective covalent modification of fructose bisphosphate aldolase in crude extracts of chicken breast muscle by fluorescein 5'-isothiocyanate (5'-FITC) at pH 7.0 and 35 degrees C. The modification was observed after 1 min while no other major soluble protein was labeled even after 30 min.

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Intoxication and infection caused by foodborne pathogens are important problems worldwide, and screening tests for multiple pathogens are needed because foods may be contaminated with multiple pathogens and/or toxic metabolites. We developed a 96-well microplate, multiplex antibody microarray method to simultaneously capture and detect Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium (S. typhimurium), as well as a biomolecule (chicken immunoglobulin G or IgG employed as a proteinaceous toxin analog) in a single sample.

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A sandwich fluorescent immunoassay in a microarray format was used to capture and detect E. coli O157:H7. Here, we explored quantitative aspects, limitations, and capture efficiency of the assay.

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Escherichia coli O157:H7, a major foodborne pathogen, has been associated with numerous cases of foodborne illnesses. Rapid methods have been developed for the screening of this pathogen in foods in order to circumvent timely plate culture techniques. Unfortunately, many rapid methods are presumptive and do not claim to confirm the presence of E.

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We describe the application of enzyme-linked immunomagnetic electrochemistry (ELIME) for the rapid detection of Escherichia coli O157:H7 in buffered apple juice. The ELIME technique entails sandwiching bacterial analyte between antibody-coated magnetic beads and an alkaline phosphatase-conjugated antibody. The beads (with or without bound bacteria) were localized onto the surface of magnetized graphite ink electrodes in a multiwell plate format.

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E. coli O157:H7 is a pathogenic microorganism that has been implicated in numerous cases of foodborne illnesses. A variety of rapid methods exist that show promise for the presumptive detection of this pathogen without the immediate need for incubating test samples for hours to days in microbial enrichment and culture media.

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